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WHY
We believe that artists are a mirror for the community and we want to give them a voice

HOW
mapping all known and lesser known artists in Kenya
mapping all the public art ideas in Kenya
mapping all the art centres and art events in Kenya
mapping all the public spaces in Kenya
connecting art with public space
creating a community among all the artists in Kenya
giving artists a temporary platform to showcase their work – the Urban Mirror Show

WHO
Urban Mirror is a Community Based Organization started by the hip hop music group Ukoo Flani and the multimedia NGO Cultural Video Foundation. The main purpose of the Organisation is to use art to promote community development.

This January 2010, Jeff Warren worked with a series of organizations and communities to produce maps with children and adults from several communities in Lima, including the Cantagallo settlement of Shipibo on the bank of the Rimac and the Juan Pablo II community in Villa El Salvador.

Seeking to invert the traditional power structure of cartography, the grassroots mappers used helium balloons and kites to loft their own "community satellites" made with inexpensive digital cameras. The resulting images, which are owned by the residents, are georeferenced and stitched into maps which are 100x higher resolution that those offered by Google, at extremely low cost. In some cases these maps may be used to support residents' claims to land title. By creating open-source tools to include everyday people in exploring and defining their own geography, we hopes to enable a diverse set of alternative agendas and practices, and to emphasize the fundamentally narrative and subjective aspects of mapping over its use as a medium of control.